Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
David Foster From a letter to the editor in today’s WSJ:
A few years after retirement I had a chat with an eager young fellow a month away from his MBA in finance at the Wharton School. I asked what appealed to him about finance. “It is so scientific,” he replied. I then asked him what he thought about Long-Term Capital Management. “Never heard of it,” was his answer.
At this blog we have lots of smart Chicago Boyz and Chicago Grrlz and Readerz…but is anyone here as smart as a certain Chinese official from 1000 BC…or maybe even earlier?
Imagine that you are the official in charge of caravans and messengers. Some of these travelers need to cross an unmarked plain, which is subject to sandstorms, thick cloud layers, and heavy fogs…and they have frequently been getting lost. You need something that will aways point south. Problem: the magnetic compass has not yet been invented.
Can you think of a way–without using magnetic principles or other technology that wasn’t likely to be available in 1000 BC…to solve this problem? Think about it for a few minutes before reading further.
In 2007, Time magazine did a feature on the 50 worst cars of all time. One of the cars named–along with the 1958 Ford Edsel and the 1970 AMC Gremlin–was the 1909 Model T.
We’ve frequently discussed energy issues at this blog, so I thought people might be interested in this item.
Sen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has demanded that the Department of the Interior suppress plans to lease government land for solar plants in the Mohave Desert.
Also, a regional director of the Bureau of Land Management has objected to any plans for “water-cooled” solar energy projects in “the arid basins of Southern Nevada.” (He is clearly referring to solar-thermal plants: these use water to cool and condense the steam and also for cleaning the mirrors.)
There are also environmental objections to the transmission lines that need to be built in order to connect solar plants to population centers.
I expect to see a lot more of this kind of thing. As I’ve remarked before, “progressives” love alternative energy technologies as long as they remain purely theoretical. Once they become practical and ready for deployment, it becomes obvious that these technologies–like all human activities–have certain downsides. And the love is gone.
So the search for a perfect and non-existent form of energy production will continue, while our economy is seriously crippled due to electricity shortages and skyrocketing costs.
(link via Glenn)
Obama has released his plan for the expanded development of passenger rail in America.
Best practice in high-speed passenger rail is, of course, to power it electrically, from overhead wires. And these things use significant amounts of electricity. A quick search reveals that a French TGV train draws somewhere in the range of 6-12 megawatts. (For comparison, 6 MW is the amount of power consumed by 60,000 regular incandescent 100-watt bulbs.)
Most of the electricity that runs the TGV, of course, comes from France’s extensive nuclear power system. It’s unfortunate that Obama, with his admiration for things European, is not paying more attention to France’s very successful experience with nuclear power.